Welcome

It is hard to believe that Term 1 is drawing to a close! It has been a very busy and productive term as our previous editions of the Section News have shared. We hope you enjoy our final edition for Term 1 and trust that you will have a safe and restful holiday break.

Lunchtime Clubs

In Secondary 9/10 we have created some lunchtime clubs for students to attend. The clubs run each day of the week and offer a variety of activities for the students to engage in. They operate from 12:50-1:20pm allowing the students to have 15 minutes out in the yard, either on the oval, in the 9/10 Common Room or on the 9/10 basketball court before joining in on a club activity. All clubs are run inside.

The clubs we will be offering for Term 2 are:

Monday: Computers

Tuesday and Thursday: Board Games

Wednesday: iPad coding

Friday: Basketball

Mathematics

In the last weeks of term 1 we have concluded our intensive focus on Place Value. Students have worked on improving their ability to work with numbers on a number line, accurately labelling number lines, placing numbers on a number line and comparing numbers. Students have worked with the equal, greater than and less than symbols (= > <) to show the comparison between numbers.

In the statistics and data focus we have concluded our investigation of displaying information in tables and graphs with the development of class data on the origins of families in Secondary 9/10. Students used Excel to create a bar graph to display the data visually.

English

For the last part of Term 1 we have shifted focus in writing to narrative texts. Students have been working hard to create sizzling starts to their stories and have practiced tightening tension and banning the boring bits to create more engaging and interesting narrative texts.

We finished the term with a Big Write where students were given a picture and had to create a story from the image. In reading we have spent some time looking at newspaper articles, the layout of a newspaper and identifying the main idea and authors purpose of the articles.

Integrated Studies

To wrap up our investigation of Immigration in Term 1 we have explored reasons why someone would choose to leave the country of their birth and come to live in Australia. They watched some videos of migrants recounting their stories and reasons for leaving.

The students then needed to use their inferring skills to try and imagine what it would be like to have to leave your home and live somewhere else. What would they take? How would they feel? Next term each class is going to focus on a particular area of immigration that they would like to explore further. Some classes are going to be investigating different cultures while others want to look further into Aboriginal Australia and the impact of colonisation.

Social Competencies

In Social Competencies classes have continued to investigate the steps we can follow to manage feelings and emotions. Students have used a checklist that they can work through to help them manage their behaviour. 1. Sensing how they are feeling. 2. Naming the emotion. 3. Making sense of what caused the feeling. 4. Checking in about how you feel about having the emotion. 5. Acting, deciding how to deal with the emotion.

PreCAL

English

In reading the PreCAL classes have continued a focus on narrative texts and comprehension strategies. Classes have continued reading the story of Weirdo and have focused on making predictions about what might happen next using the images and prior knowledge to help them. We have also focused on being able to make personal connections with the text while they are reading.

In writing the classes have created a personal narrative based on the community experience day.

Classes chose an event from the experience day which would be interesting to write a personal narrative about. They have explored planning the event sequence, looking at who was in the story, where it happened and what took place. They then used adjectives to make the story more interesting;

Mathematics

All of our PreCAL mathematicians work is coming together with our PreCAL picnic on the last day of term! The students have worked really hard together to gather all of the data they needed to create a shopping list for the picnic. They have used the Place Value skills they have been practicing to represent the numbers on the shopping list. Classes then used the shopping list out of the community experience day to purchase the items needed for the day. There will be lots of Maths happening on the day with students counting out the items needed and making sure we have enough. Fingers crossed the weather is good!

Steam

In the PreCAL STEAM program the students have completed their design and construction of the wind chimes which are now in the process of being displayed in the 9/10 veggie garden. The students are really proud of their creations, we think they look fabulous!

Duke of Edinburgh

Our Term 1 Fit For Life program concludes in Week 9 with students moving into new groups in Term 2. After we ran the survey for Fit For Life options in Term 2 a few weeks ago we created groups for Interschool Sport, Ten Pin bowling (this was so popular we have created a larger group with two teachers!), MAT Life Skills, Outdoor Adventure, Mini Golf, Watermarc Gym, Action Indoor Sports and Yoga & Music Movement.

In STEAM Students completed their first unit for the term and celebrated their learning in their STEAM group and will also be sharing this with the rest of the school at the end of term assembly. We hope to see you there!

Sam Birrell

Secondary 9/10 Team Leader

Dates to Remember

March 2018

April

May